Tastes of home

It's not exactly Proust and the madeleines, but yesterday, I had my own trip back in time. We went out to Hockley (a new place, our old one is now a housing development) to cut our own Christmas tree. On the way back, I made everyone stop at the brand new Steak n Shake on FM 1960 for lunch. It's the only one in Houston at this point.

Steak n Shake was founded in Normal, Illinois, not all that far from where I grew up in Saint Louis. My mom, who is pretty picky, actually likes their steakburgers. So, this was one of our eating out places. We went there fairly regularly.

In high school, every Saturday night, we'd end up in one of three places: Steak n Shake, White Castle, or Naugles. I think I can smell the grease from each of them. Sadly, Naugles and their greasy delights are no more and White Castle seems rooted in the midwest. But Steak n Shake has been steadily expanding. There's one in Tallahassee we'll usually stop at on the way to the beach...but now we have one near us. When we walked in the door, one of my kids said, "this looks just like the one near Grammy and Papa!"

There's a certain embedded memory for these places deep in my soul. I can still smell the White Castle. My mom hated White Castle, so it's only a place I went with my friends, and there were 40 years of grease and onions that lent a distinctive odor to the building. Your hair would even smell like White Castle after you went. Even though the Steak n Shake we went as teens burned down in the 1990s, I can still hear my high school gang noisily clustered around its tables, ordering one more order of fries to share. And, although Naugles is shuttered and long gone, I can still see their tacos greasing up their wrapper and taste the hot sauce I loved so much. We'd join the long line of kids in the drive-thru or if we were wanting to be social, we'd go in and see all our friends.

It's amazing how rooted in a certain time or place certain things are. Each of these foods really means Saint Louis to me:

• Imo's pizza. Saint Louis style pizza requires a mixture of mozarella and provel cheese. Think of provel as a processed white cheese. It melts smoothly and it is the best for cheese toast and pizza. It's hard to get outside of Saint Louis and for the life of me I don't know why. For a very brief window, you could get provel at Central Market, but I guess other shoppers didn't know what a treat it was and they stopped carrying it. I will probably crave Saint Louis-style pizza forever.
  
• Amighetti's sandwiches. Saint Louis has a large Italian population and a lot of Italian markets and restaurants are concentrated on "the Hill." These sandwiches are the food of picnics.
• Miss Hullings Lemon Cake. Miss Hullings cafeterias are gone, but this was a St. Louis staple since the 50s. Miss Hullings cakes have a gazillion layers (not really, but that's how it seemed). You can still get them at Straub's grocery, but it's not the same as going down to the past-its-prime cafeteria and pushing your tray through the line.
  
• Toasted ravioli. It's not toasted, it's fried. Now you can get this on lots of menus, but once upon a time it was really only available in Saint Louis.
  
• Ted Drewes. Frozen custard, which is a lot richer (and caloric) than soft-serve ice-cream. Ted Drewes is a Saint Louis tradition, still busily packed on summer nights. There's a whole menu of mix-ins and just before they hand it to you, they turn it upside down to show that it's so thick, it stays in the cup. I always got a small with banana and chocolate chips. The first Ted Drewes opened in Saint Louis in 1930.
  
• Crown Candy Kitchen. The giant bowl of ice cream and sauces. We'd always share. Opened in 1913, and still serving up the good stuff.
  
• Gooey Butter Cake. Someone always brought a gooey butter cake to the potluck. Think of a collapsed cake oozing and you've got it. There's a recipe I use sometimes in the cake mix doctor book that pretty well replicates the taste. Here's one from Paula Deen.
  

Today, with the proliferation of chains and the popularity of cooking shows, there seems to be a lot less regionality with restaurants and food products. You can mail order anything from anywhere and as grocery stores have 50,000+ products, you can probably find your childhood memory on a shelf somewhere in town. I don't have any idea what will say Houston to my boys. I wonder if there's a smell, a taste, a look that will transport them back in time the way that some of these foods do me.

I'd love it if you'd share your memories in the comments. I get a huge kick out of this sort of stuff.